The following is an e-panel with the publishers of six publishers that concentrate on putting out great chapbooks. I love the chapbook form. There is a seemingly natural variance from publisher to publisher in terms of the actual book as object – some staple, some bind, some use different stock for covers and put in a leaf sheet, other don’t, etc. I find myself not just admiring the books for the words inside, but for the care and style that the publisher utilized when putting them together.
Kevin Sampsell – Future Tense Press
Ander Monson – New Michigan Press
C.M. Mayo – Tameme
Kristy Bowen – Dancing Girl Press
Carl – Greying Ghost Press
Justin Marks – Kitchen Press
Dan:
I’d like to first thank you all for participating in this e-panel. My first question is simply, where did the name of your press come from?
Future Tense Press:
It was simply a name I decided to use for publishing my own chapbooks. I started doing it back in 1990 and I guess you’d say it was a vanity venture at that point. Then I started publishing other people a couple of years later. I like Future Tense because it could have a literal meaning as well as an abstract meaning. Sometimes I worry that it sounds too science fiction.
New Michigan Press:
NMP arose, actually, on an assignment from one of my professors in grad school who had us design a logo for the name of a press that we were hereby creating. Possibly. I’m not sure that’s true, actually, now. Alternately: the year before I took a printing course in the book arts program at Alabama, where I got my MFA, and all of us had to create virtual presses, since we were letterpress printing things, and so, being of Michigan but not in Michigan, I called my press New Michigan Press. As in a new Michigan, as in wherever the press resided was now a new Michigan. Or as in the work we published somehow constituted a new Michigan of the mind. In actuality we were only located in Michigan from 2003 to 2008.
Tameme:
Tameme is a Nahuatl (Aztec) word for porter. I was living in Mexico City at the time I founded the enterprise, so it appealed to me. Alas, almost everyone outside of Mexico has some trouble pronouncing it. It's pronounced (more or less) "ta-MEH-meh."
Dancing Girl Press:
I am actually a freak for French poster art, and I have this giant poster in my bedroom of this turn of the century can-can dancer. I think I was just lying in bed sometime in late 2003, thinking about starting a press and it occurred to me to call it that, even though it would be months before I actually published anything. I sort of like the whole notion of “dancing girls”--ballerinas, can-can girls, strippers, burlesque performers as sexual/erotic object and subject, male gaze vs. reality, a nod to the feminist issues therein. Plus it just sounded cool...
Greying Ghost Press:
The name comes from a back-handed compliment I’d long ago given myself. It is an inside joke of sorts. I’m getting old and my hair is turning gray— so I better start doing something productive. Also, I like the idea of ghosts growing old for (possibly) a second time.
Kitchen Press:
I live in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. The name of the press is a play on that.
Dan:
To get a quick idea of who it is that we have here – can you please fill me in a bit about your background, especially that which pertains to the literary world? This is sort of the “Why you?” question to our panelists.
Future Tense Press:
I’m sort of embarrassed but proud at the same time that I created and built Future Tense pretty much by myself. I didn’t know any writers at all when I started. I hadn’t even read much at that point. I met a bunch of writers when I moved to Portland and got more serious about writing and publishing. Then I started working at Powell’s in late 1997 and took over with coordinating events a year later. I’ve also been in charge of the small press literary buying. Besides all that, I started writing more book reviews and publishing in bigger venues at the start of the new century. I also started editing this sporadic series of books for Manic D Press a couple of years ago and that’s a whole other angle for Future Tense. I’m in a lucky position where I know a lot of people in the book world and I’m meeting new people all the time. Everyone from zinesters to editors at major publishing houses.
New Michigan Press:
Well, like many of the others here, I was a writer first. Maybe. I make my living as a professor, where I teach in the MFA program at the University of Arizona. I never really know how to introduce myself to others, or how to describe myself: writer-teacher-editor? Teacher-writer-designer? Etc. For me my teaching life overlaps significantly with my writing life, and both feed the other. And both draw from my interests in publications, editorial work, and design. I’ve always been involved in publishing others. This started in college where I somehow became editor of our college litmag, which had an incredible $40,000 a year budget (still insane and amazing—they have a stellar literary magazine and creative writing program which intertwine I am sure). When I was editing Catch the web was just starting to take off so I established the first website for the journal, and we published some original work online. I designed that site in Netscape Composer, unfortunately enough. A lot of stuff blinked. It was pretty rad. This was in 1996. Then I went on to get my MA in English at Iowa State University where the graduate literary magazine, unfortunately named Sketch, was defunct. Compadres and I brought that back to life, and I started another online litmag there called knotgrass which was pretty decent, albeit small. I ended up at the University of Alabama for my MFA where I lucked into working on Black Warrior Review, interned at the University of Alabama Press doing book design, and did broadsides for the reading series. After I left BWR I started my journal DIAGRAM, which I continue with today, and started up New Michigan Press in more seriousness. I was debating going on to an editorial or design job, but then I got a teaching job, and my first two books got picked up, and the teaching allowed me to really focus on all the stuff I wanted to focus on, editorial and writing and design and internetty and everything.
Tameme:
I'm a writer, poet and literary translator (specializing in contemporary Mexican literature). You can read oodles about my own work on my website. I founded Tameme as a bilingual (Spanish / English) literary journal back in the late 1990s, in the wake of NAFTA. The journal published many Mexican, American, and Canadian writers, all in English/ Spanish format, including Edwidge Danticat, A. Manette Ansay, Margaret Atwood, W.D. Snodgrass, Guillermo Samperio, Juan Villoro, and so many more. You can read about the history of Tameme as a journal here.
Dancing Girl Press:
I’ve been writing since high school and went on to study English and theatre at a small Midwest liberal school, scribbling what I thought was good poetry the entire time but with only vague aspirations toward any sort of literary career (and no real idea how to go about it). I convinced myself I intended to teach by the time I finished, and went on to get my MA in Literature from DePaul, but decided at some point that I didn’t have the temperament for teaching, and decided to just get some sort of employment that wouldn’t be too draining mentally and allow me to focus on writing…all of which, of course, landed me in a couple library jobs. In the summer of 2001, I was working at Columbia College (where I still work today) and found myself spending long stretches in front a computer on the circulation desk at work... Up til then, I had been submitting poems with a couple of small successes to print journals, but that year I discovered the world of online journals, and of course wanted ever so badly to start my own. wicked alice published its first issue in September that year, and grew larger over the next couple of years. In fall of 2003, I started plotting to start a chapbook press, which, if nothing else, would get my own chapbook out there. (I’d had a chapbook accepted in 2002 by a small, local press, but it was still in production and I was impatient since I was doing a lot of readings where people who wanted books were walking away empty handed....) I also thought that a print companion to the online stuff would be a great idea. I had started taking classes in the MFA program at Columbia, and my second semester, wound up in a Small Press Publishing course over in the Fiction Writing Department. My project at that point, was a compendium of the best of wicked alice. I decided to do a trial run with my own chap, Bloody Mary in terms of layout, costs, printing, design, & production. Once I successfully had done that, it was only a matter of time before I began looking for other books to publish and it took off from there…I still occasionally publish some of my own work, since I believe in the strongly in self-publication and the DIY ethos (mostly little chapbooks for my own amusement or special book art projects…) but now try to devote most of our fiscal resources to publishing other writers since I’ve found some excellent presses (like New Michigan on this very panel) thankfully willing publish my own projects.
Greying Ghost Press:
Not sure if anything in my background pertains to the literary world. Other than I’m a used book buyer who spends a good chunk of the day thinking about books and bits and pieces of poems. I’ve been doing Greying Ghost officially for about a year now and before that I did an online journal called Pettycoat Relaxer.
Kitchen Press:
I’m a poet. My first full length collection, A Million in Prizes, is forthcoming from New Issues Press in spring 2009, and a new chapbook, Voir Dire, will be published by Rope-a-Dope Press in December 2008. My previous chapbooks are [Summer insular] (horse less press, 2007) and You Being You by Proxy (Kitchen Press, 2005). I was Editor of LIT magazine for a couple years, and I learned how to actually make a chapbook in a workshop I took with Fanny Howe as well as in a class with Shanna Compton that was specifically about learning how to make chapbooks.
Dan:
I’m going to end up jumping around a bit here – dipping into the business aspect of the publishing world from time to time. What sort of print runs are you publishing? Do you keep track of First vs. Second print runs, and so on?
Future Tense Press:
Occasionally I will publish a paperback book but it’s mostly chapbooks for me and I usually start with 200. I just use standard photocopy places so it’s easy for me to just go in and crank out a few more whenever they’re needed, even if that means just making ten more of something. I’m pretty bad at keeping track of print runs and how many I sell of something. I’m pretty good at estimating though.
New Michigan Press:
It depends on the title. We do print runs of around 500 usually. We do keep track of the print runs; though we are in the process of switching technologies with this current year of chapbooks to perfect-bound, four-color cover, 5” x 8” (or in one case 5.5” x 8.5”) books. And we’re going to be producing them using digital printing/POD technology so this may render the idea of a print run obsolete. Not to say we’re completely abandoning the saddle-stitched chapbooks since we may well do more of them, but we’re excited about this transition (especially since the production costs are the same, the distribution is significantly improved, and the artifact of the book is increasingly cool).
Tameme:
We do offset printing (not digital or print-on-demand), so the more we print, the cheaper it is per unit, and it quickly becomes less a question of how much does it cost to print, but what are the freight and storage costs? (Um, is there room in the garage?) But we're talking literary chapbooks here. The numbers are in-line with what most literary journals do. Approximately 1,000.
Dancing Girl Press:
Since I do all the printing and assembly myself, we usually do about 100 out of the gate, maybe more depending on how many copies the author wants initially . After that, I pretty much just keep making them in small batches for as long as there is a demand for them. A couple things have been limited, special projects involving finite materials, authors who request a limited editions (usually because a full-length book is imminent.). I see the value in making things special limited editions, a culture of rarity, but I also believe more firmly in spreading the work as far and wide as possible. I usually leave it up to the author, once those initial 100 are gone as to whether I’ll continue to do more
We have a couple chaps that are well over 300 copies printed…
Greying Ghost Press:
I like doing small initial print runs, usually between 50-75 copies. I like the small print runs because I do everything (printing, cutting, folding etc) myself by hand. And with small print runs you can experiment more with design and packaging, giving the whole project a very intimate feel. For me, if I were to do larger print runs, because I’m usually strapped for time, the project might get watered down and look a bit generic. And obviously, with a small print run, I can keep the costs down.
As for the second part of the question, in the event that a chapbooks sells out, any future print runs would be up to the author. I’ve met some writers who like the idea of having just that brief burst. Others want their work to soldier on. I can see the merits of both sides. Personally, if a book sells well and there’s enough of a demand, I have no qualms about printing more (depending on time and costs and scheduling…) with slightly less fancy packaging.
Kitchen Press:
My print runs are essentially print-on-demand. If someone orders a book, I make it and send it out. The only book I printed a second edition of was my own You Being You by Proxy, but that’s because I wound up making some revisions to a few poems after I had initially published the book.
Dan:
You have made the decision to publish chapbooks as opposed to books with full spines? What factors led to that decision? Have you discovered anything about the chapbook form since beginning your publishing endeavor that you hadn’t really thought of before you started?
Future Tense Press:
It’s mainly a financial issue for me. I can’t afford to shell out a couple grand to print a “real book” and besides, I like short books. I like reading them and I certainly would rather be responsible for editing and proofreading 40 pages instead of 200. It makes my job easier. Some people think it’s unusual that I focus on fiction and nonfiction prose for the chapbooks I publish (most people assume you publish poetry if it’s a chapbook), but for those kinds of writers that are lesser-known, I think 40 pages or so is a good introduction. People don’t mind paying five bucks to try out a writer they haven’t read much of. It’s like a taster sampler. Plus, yeah, I like the handmade quality of the chapbook. I’ve staple nearly all the chapbooks I’ve published myself.
New Michigan Press:
I’ve always been more enamored of the chapbook form than the book, especially for poetry, which is about 85% of what we publish. It’s a more manageable project as a reader and writer, I think, and I like the heft of that sized project in the hands and in the brain. And we’ve seen the chapbook start to really come back as a form this decade, particularly in poetry, but also increasingly in prose. I think there’s more of this DIY aesthetic starting to return to publishing as the tools and technology is more obviously within reach and as writers and readers start to get a little disillusioned with mass market publishing. A chapbook is more intimate, more of an artifact, often, a one-of-a-kind, a private experience, a limited edition.
Tameme:
Two reasons. First, because a smaller book --- a chapbook --- is so much cheaper. It's cheaper to print, it's cheaper to ship from the printers, cheaper to mail to buyers, cheaper to give away (our policy is to be generous with review copies, especially to bloggers), and it's less time consuming for all involved in the production, few of whom are paid. Second: An additional and very crucial advantage over a journal (what we did before) or say, an anthology (which is what the journal really was) is that the chapbook is more appealing for the author. They have something that focuses exclusively on their work, and they can sell it--- as it's cheaper than a book with a spine--- relatively easily at their own events. And again, as we are able to send out more review copies than we would otherwise, it brings their work that much more visibility.
Dancing Girl Press:
Initially, it was just a matter of money and resources. My usual budget for a chapbook is about $100 for paper, cardstock, toner, postage for review & promo copies and such… There wasn’t really an option for anything else at the time (actually there is now with POD, which I am taking advantage of as well for some future projects, but it’s still far more cost effective and manageable to print them myself.) Plus, I like having more firmly handed control over things. I’ve also sort of fallen in love with chapbooks as objects and have a massive personal collection. I’m also interested in stretching boundaries of what a chapbook is and can be... I’ve also discovered that sometimes, these slim little volumes are where some of the most exciting poetry I’m reading is coming from. There’s a certain amount of risk possibility when things are on such a small scale. I like being able to give newer, less well-known poets a publication opportunity, even though we may only sell a handful of copies initially, than have to only publish books I feel will be big sellers, a pressure I would definitely feel if I were paying a couple thousand to finance a book…I initially just funded the press out of pocket, but eventually we broke even, then started to turn a profit, which helps to pay for publishing more books and rent on the studio space, which got the entire operation out of my dining room, which was starting to get a little nuts...
Greying Ghost Press:
For me, it’s a matter of how much time I have and what my budget looks like. I’m the type that likes to do everything in-house so I tend to rely heavily on stapling. I have nightmares about having an outside company print and bind a book only to have it come out looking different than I’d pictured it. One thing I’ve learned is that chapbooks can be produced at relatively low costs. And that just because something didn’t cost much to make, can still look beautiful and professional. I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of bookbinding and typography. A great source has been “The Elements of Typographic Style” by Robert Bringhurst. He says that proper typography is essential—it’s the duty of the publisher to accurately represent the text while maintaining a level of invisibility. And its true because when I get a chapbook in the mail that looks hastily thrown together (i.e. poor font on untrimmed copier paper) I immediately have a negative reaction which isn’t the fault of the writer. My job is to make things look smooth enough so the reader doesn’t get distracted (while not breaking the bank to do so).
Kitchen Press:
Well, all Kitchen Press chapbooks do actually have spines. But I know what you mean. Money was a big part of my reason for doing chaps as opposed to perfect bound books. It’s a lot cheaper to make a chapbook than a perfect bound book. Plus, I enjoy making chapbooks, printing them myself, folding them and stapling them.
One of the main things I’ve learned about chapbooks is just how thorough and complete they can be on their own. I think when I started I saw chapbooks largely as stepping stones to full length books, something to just give a reader a taste of things to come or generate quick exposure for the poet—sort of like EPs are to LPs. But then I started publishing chaps that were totally complete, stand alone works of art that were every bit as strong as—often times stronger than—many books I was reading.
In that sense, I think chapbooks are really in many ways the ideal form for poetry. You can read them largely in one sitting and at the same time be pulled into a whole new, exciting world, one that’s fully formed.
Dan:
How many titles do you plan on publishing per year?
Future Tense Press:
I think the most I do is four. I usually aim for three. Because I work full time and parent and write myself, there’s not as much time to do Future Tense as I’d like. And I’m a control freak about it so I won’t let anyone else edit or staple the books, or read through submissions.
New Michigan Press:
We usually do about six chapbook titles a year, though we also print the DIAGRAM anthologies, broadsides (maybe 10 or so a year), and occasional quarter-chaps (sized to a quarter of a letter-size sheet folded), too. It’s a manageable number for me to commit to, select, produce, and promote, since this is only one of the endeavors I’m involved in.
Tameme:
One.
Dancing Girl Press:
I started out with the goal to publish 3-5 in 2004, but it’s grown exponentially since then. I think we did 4 that year, 6 in 2005, 9 in 2006, 14 in 2007, and so far 12 with a bunch more to go in the next few months. I doubled up on a lot of them this year, and usually am working on two simultaneously these days. Next year, though I’m planning on just 12 for the year….but then, I might do more depending on my mood. Control freak that I am (and I am), I love the fact that I do have the sort of freedom to take on as much work as I want and set my own boundaries and budgets.
Greying Ghost Press:
As many as is reasonably and fiscally possible. There’s a fine balance between publishing just enough and over-saturation. Nonetheless I do have a rough goal of one or two books every couple months. That in addition to a slew of broadsides and pamphlets. Some formally announced and others sneaked in through the back door.
Kitchen Press:
I generally don’t have a plan for how many chaps I do per year, but I think so far it averages out to about 4 per year.
Dan:
Do you have an open submission process, or is work solicited, or do you have contests? And do you prefer electronic submissions vs. hard copy, or vice versa, or doesn’t it matter to you?
Future Tense Press:
Right now the Future Tense web site says we’re not accepting submissions and it’s been like that most of the year. I usually do have an open policy but almost half the people I’ve worked with are people I’ve read somewhere and then solicited. Both ways are exciting for me though. I like finding people in the email slush pile. I prefer email queries first and then I might ask to see work but most of the time I can tell from a query if it’s something I have time to look into further. I’ve never had a Future Tense contest. I’m not sure I like contests.
New Michigan Press:
We are open to queries year round, though we rarely read unsolicited manuscripts during our contest season. For the most part, probably 85% of the manuscripts we’ve published have come out of the submissions for our yearly chapbook contest. We’ve moved the contest submissions online because it’s a lot easier to track and manage the stacks, and since a lot of our readers and editors are not local, it makes for an easier reading experience. We still accept hardcopy submissions but they’re a bit more of a pain for us to deal with.
Tameme:
It varies, but when we have a call for submissions we always post in on the website, www.tameme.org Just click on "Someter / Submit".
Dancing Girl Press:
We have an open submission period every summer, from which I pull about 75 % of what we publish. I like to pull in a lot of Chicago authors, so I do a bit of soliciting in that arena, and sometimes from wicked alice contributors. We only accept electronic submissions since I have more than enough paper around --I’m drowning in it. I’m an organization freak, so I have a little system of flags and e-mail folders that help me log and track submissions. There’s a “yes” file, a “maybe” file, and a “no thanks” file. If I’m interested, I’ll advance it to the 2nd round of reading, print it out, carry it around a bit, and finally make a decision.
Greying Ghost Press:
I read manuscripts all year round. No contests or windows of opportunity. I understand the benefits of both, but with an open door policy you can get a pretty eclectic sampling of the poets and writers who are out there in the world. Plus I like the idea of a publisher who puts out stuff by both the known and unknown. Seems less hoity-toity.
I prefer electronic subs—easier to format and less likely to get lost. I would however recommend keeping all submissions and manuscripts backed up some discs. Just in case there’re technological glitches (computer crashes). Also, with electronic submissions, you can pick out a portion of the text and email it with any questions to the writer asap.
Kitchen Press:
At first I solicited work. Then people starting to write to ask if they could email me manuscripts. If I had time, I’d say yes. Morgan Lucas Schuldt did that, as did Mathias Svalina. I’ve also had poets whose books I published recommend other poets to me. So a few books have come about that way, Lily Brown’s Old With You and Sandra Simonds’ Tomorrow’s Bright Bracelets, both of which should be out by the new year.
Dan:
How do you go about designing and printing your books? Do you have an in-house art person, do the authors get involved, is your printer local?
Future Tense Press:
I think cover design is really important and I know a lot of talented people who do great art or design. Sometimes the authors know someone that can do a cover design too and if they’re good, I’ll give them the go-ahead. That’s how Elizabeth Ellen’s cover was done—by an artist friend she knew. Riley Michael Parker, my newest author did the funny drawing on his chapbook. Mike Topp had one of his famous artist friends do his cover. I asked Derek White from Calamari Press to do the Gary Lutz cover. Pete McCracken, a good friend of mine in Portland who happens to be a highly regarded designer, has done a few things for me too.
And yeah, I usually do the interior of my books at a photo copy place. The covers, which are mostly in full color, are printed at a place called Oregon Blue Print—they have great prices. I can get 100 covers on cardstock for $45.
As far as the chapbook layouts go, I use to do them and then I started having different friends help me. The last couple of years, I’ve had interns that I have done that (There is a publishing course taught at Portland State University and they have students that intern all over Portland). A couple of times the authors have even done it, which is actually nice. They’re more inclined to fix mistakes!
New Michigan Press:
I do all the design for the books, though we try to work closely with our authors on selecting cover art and making design decisions. Most of the time the authors find and send us possible cover images, and we’ll have some back and forth selecting an image that works for us and the author, then do a set of cover designs, which go to the author. There’s another back and forth with those, and with the interior designs, and we eventually end up with a product that fits the general design of our list (we have worked with a couple design templates that we like quite a bit, and that give us some design integrity as a series). We’ve worked with a bunch of printers, most recently a great local outfit in Grand Rapids (our recent home). We’re using a different printer for our new series who does digital printing and print-on-demand (they’re not local), so we’ll see how that goes.
I should say that sometimes our writers have a stronger artistic inclination. For instance, Kristy Bowen (here with us, of Dancing Girl) pretty much did the entire cover of her chapbook, Feign (which is stellar, by the way), on her own. As did Jason Bredle. I’m not averse to letting go of the reins as long as they’re being held by someone with vision and talent, and as long as the final result looks New Michigan Pressy, and is up to our standards in terms of design.
Tameme:
For the covers, we've always gone to a professional graphic designer. We've worked very happily with both Kathleen Fetner and Ines Hilde -- I can recommend them both. All of our titles feature a painting, which the designer incorporates into the design. It's important that the author be happy with the cover. That said, the covers need to be in-lione with the "look" of the series. I'm really delighted with our two most recent cover paintings, Edgar Soberon's "Aguacates" which was on Agustin Cadena's chapbook, and Elena Climent's "Tiled Window and Seashell with View to Mexico City" which was on Jorge Fernandez Granados and translator John Oliver Simon's chapbook. You can see the covers and read more about the chapbooks on www.tameme.org. How do we go about printing them? I've been happiest working with a printing broker. They know what they're doing and they always get us the best deal.
Dancing Girl Press:
I am, embarrassingly enough, still laying these things out in MSWord, a strategy which I have perfected over the years via trial and error, and can do pretty expeditiously these days. I’ve been trying to teach myself InDesign, but I don’t get enough time with it to do me any good. I like Word because it’s the only program that will no doubt be on any computer I work on in a given day (about 4 between work, home, and the studio.) So I can work on layout at anytime, which is key to actually getting them done. I guess I’m the in-house art person, but I like it when the authors have something specific in mind that I can use, and or definite ideas that I can work with to come up with something in terms of image, color, texture., and well I guess I’m my own printer as well. I do have a production assistant to help assemble books and a couple volunteer helperson occasion , but most of the design work and actual printing is me.
Greying Ghost Press:
I do everything in-house. I tend to do all the physical (cutting, folding, sorting, etc.) and layout work. Plus having a wife who is a graphic designer doesn’t hurt either. As for the physical printing, I use an ordinary ink jet printer. I would like to pretend that I use all this fancy equipment and software but the sad truth is that I’m doing this on a HP printer from a Microsoft word document. Though I’m currently learning InDesign, thanks to my wife. I must say that Word is very underrated. Sometimes you have to work with what you’re given. As for designing, I don’t really have any methods or specific way of doing things. Trial and error would be a fitting description of how I do things. I’ll work something out and if it sticks I go with it and if not I’ll scrap the whole design. This has happened on the current chapbook I’m working on. I had come up with a fairly straight forward design, printed up the copies. Then a week later I went back to them and something didn’t feel right. Something was off. So I started over. I can never set myself to a definite layout (especially for the covers) so I’m constantly changing and re-doing things. This is why a lot of graying ghost titles have variations in covers and packaging.
Kitchen Press:
Josh Elliott designed the covers for the first 5 books I published. Since then it’s been a little catch-as-catch can. Mainly I turn to friends for design and cover art. I’ve learned enough about InDesign that, if someone gives a jpg of cover art, I can do the layout. I also see if the poet has someone in mind to design his or her cover or to provide cover art.
It works pretty well this way. The poets, I hope, feel like they have a more involved role in determining what their books will look like, and I’m always getting new artists to help broaden the look of the chapbooks I put out.
As far as printing, it’s just me, my laptop and my inkjet.
Dan:
Would you say there is a specific aesthetic to your publishing house? What do you perceive as your mission?
Future Tense Press:
I just like putting out books by people I want to read collections by. Like, I couldn’t believe Elizabeth didn’t have a book out when I published her. Charles Ullmann had this great series of How To things, these weird little flash fiction things, and I wanted them in a book so I made one. I do like finding new talent and giving them something to show. But I’ve worked with veteran writers as well. I like to publish things that have a similar maverick kind of feel but I don’t want to publish just one kind of thing. I like to surprise our readers and keep them guessing. I like publishing things that other places might be afraid to. I like that I can go from a collection of dream-like flash fiction (Magdalen Powers) to a collection of true stories by a punk rock singer (Justin Maurer) to a funny novella by a Mexican-American lesbian (Myriam Gurba) to a violent corporate satire by an unknown writer (Riley Michael Parker) and that all those books are really fun and excellent in their own ways.
New Michigan Press:
I think we tend towards publishing work that’s a bit playful with form and genre more often than not. We certainly like publishing work by authors who do not have full-length books, especially since we’ve had good luck with a lot of our authors going on within a year or two to win significant book prizes from Sarabande, University of Iowa Press, and so on. We’d love to get more prose, but the vast majority of what we see is poetry, probably because the chapbook is a form more often used for poems. I started the press to publish work that really got me going when I read it, and which was not being published elsewhere, to try to make a home for stuff that I wish I could have discovered on a bookshelf somewhere or in the pages of some sweet journal.
Tameme:
Tameme's mission is to promote English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English literary translation by publishing new writing from North America— Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. The chapbooks celebrate and disseminate this new writing and translation in an attractive and affordable format.
Dancing Girl Press:
I would say our aesthetic leans heavily toward more experimental writing by newer women poets , but I think even that experimentalism is a sliding scale, from more traditionally lyric works with a bit of innovation to very non-linear poetry/prose hybrid sort of pieces and just all sorts of things that fall in between. I myself started out more as a lyric and narrative driven poet, and occasionally I gravitate toward things in that vein. I’ve been moving in my own tastes in poetry further to the left, so I find fragmentation and circularity a bid draw these days. I’m always looking for something that surprises me.
Greying Ghost Press:
I don’t know. I can’t really say if there’s a specific aesthetic. I try to give each book a handcrafted feel. I hope when someone buy a GG chapbook they can sense that it made by hand with care. Overall, I try to keep the text clean while still maintaining an old letterpress feel. I try to never repeat myself. Plus, working as a used book buyer I see a lot of shit that people read once and automatically decide to get rid of. And that bums me out so I try and make things look classy and interesting enough to guilt people into keeping the chapbooks on their bookshelf.
Kitchen Press:
No, my aesthetic isn’t all that specific. I basically publish a) what I enjoy and b) work that I feel is deserving of a home but might not otherwise find one.
That said, my tastes tend to run more to the “experimental” side of the spectrum. Above all I’m interested in work that is taking risks, trying something different.
Dan:
What is your strategy for reviews – newspapers, literary websites, blogs, industry magazines, etc.?
Future Tense Press:
I usually send out a few copies to bloggers and a couple of magazines. Local papers if the writer is local. Perhaps specialty magazines and web sites when it applies (Gurba, for example, was reviewed in all the big women’s mags). Our next book, about teaching English in Japan (Embrace Your Insignificance by Bob Gaulke), will be sent to a few teaching magazines and travel publications.
New Michigan Press:
We send out a bunch of review copies, but it’s tough to get chapbooks reviewed in most places that publish literary reviews. I’m honestly not sure it’s all that important, but it’s nice to see our authors get noticed. Rain Taxi has an excellent chapbook review column now, and we have had good luck getting our chapbooks featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, which makes a difference. Blogs tend to review our chapbooks fairly often, which is certainly fine with us, and we do like for our authors to get involved and give us suggestions where to send chapbooks that might have a little better shot of being opened and enjoyed. The promotional side of things is my least favorite as an editor and publisher (and writer, and reader, to be honest). One hopes that great work finds its own way in the world, though that’s probably more than a little naïve, and sometimes you have to push it out of the nest.
Tameme:
Tameme titles have gotten reviews --- Bloomsbury Review, El Paso Times, and Multicultural Review, for example--- but that is not our main goal in sending out review copies. Few traditional book review venues even consider chapbooks. We're looking for word-of-mouth and blog mentions and other recognitions and opportunities for our authors and translators. So we focus on sending review copies to individuals--- influential poets, writers, literary translators, professors of literature (especially Latin American literature) and a few journalists.
Dancing Girl Press:
I usually take my cues from the author as far as where to send review copies-- anywhere the author thinks we might garner some sort of coverage.. We’re still very much a word of mouth thing, so the important thing is getting words in the right mouths via however you can. The blogosphere has been great in terms of people talking up our books, and we’ve had a few good reviews in online magazines, and a couple in print. Since the internet is key to our distribution and promotion, that’s where I focus a lot of promo efforts.
Greying Ghost Press:
A lot of interest in my press is garnered from online advertising. A great website is Goodreads.com. From that website you can read a handful of reviews and get ordering info quickly. There’s a fairly rabid print-media fanbase there, and its growing. People who are a part of that site love books and reading. And their reviews are fair. There’s also the Press Press Press blog organized by Zach Schomburg which has been very helpful as well. As far as reviews go, I don’t think I’ve ever sent out copies specifically for review. The times are such that everyone now has a blog or a social networking site with a built in readership. So in essence, your customers are now the literature critics. If I had a larger print run with more copies to spare, I’m sure I’d alter my approach a bit.
Kitchen Press:
I focus my efforts on getting books reviewed on blogs and online mags. Reviews are a significant part of promotion, I want them to reach as many people as possible. Online is the best place I know to accomplish that.
Dan:
One might assume that a chapbook publisher would have a small budget and things would totally be up to the author to find support, but I know I’ve seen at least a couple of you with tables at AWP the past couple of years, and have seen stories about most of you as well. Just how is your press going about finding publicity for your authors? Are you supporting author reading tours? Sending out review copies? Finding interviews for them? How involved do you feel you need your authors to be in getting the word out, and do you find most of your authors willing to go as far as you need them to?
Future Tense Press:
Whenever I put out someone’s book, I always tell the author that I would love their help getting the word out. It helps immensely if a writer can contact reviewers themselves and/or get his own interviews and readings. Sometimes my intern can help with that stuff too.
I haven’t been to AWP yet but I’ve been to a couple of smaller things around here. I think I get a little more publicity than some other micropresses because I’ve been doing it for so long. I just know a lot of people at this point, and a lot of people are familiar with Future Tense. I was lucky to have a couple of my authors break out and get deals with major publishers and that brought a lot of respect to what I do. I think after I published the chapbook for Please Don’t Kill the Freshman (in late 2001) and it got so much buzz and word-of-mouth, Future Tense was all of a sudden this respected thing. After eleven years of photocopying and stapling! That book and its wonderful author is the highlight of my publishing career.
I think running a press is like running a record label. I was very inspired by K records when I started, and later Sub Pop, Merge, and Matador. I think a lot of small publishers are like that—the chapbooks are like little records and you collect them because you trust the label, you believe in the “brand.”
Budget-wise, I can’t really pay for author tours but I will set up readings if the author is traveling. Again, this is something I hope the author will do to spread the word. Not just about the book, but about him or her, and whatever they do next with whatever publisher. I want to be a stepping stone to greater things for them. A launch pad. I should say too, that although I don’t pay authors cash for their books, I do give them copies of their own books as they need them (roughly 20% of the print-run—for example, 40 copies of the first 200).
New Michigan Press:
I feel pretty strongly that we owe it to our writers to at the least have a table at AWP, book signings there, maintain a strong website, send out press releases to the media and to our list. We can maintain a presence, because there’s nothing sadder than hoping your press will be at AWP (it’s also a little depressing that small presses have become so academic-centric, at least as far as AWP is an academic conference), and trying in vain to find them. But it’s understandable. A lot of editors are of course writers and have other commitments at AWP, so it can be expensive to get people there to do things right. We like it and feel it’s important, which is why we do it.
Beyond that we don’t have a lot of resources we can commit to it. We do coordinate with bookstores for author readings and do direct fulfillment if authors are setting up their own readings (which we highly recommend). We’ve sponsored a couple readings, both locally, and at conferences like AWP, which have gone well, though it’s a bit of a rarity for us. We certainly send out a bunch of review copies and press releases, but we have better luck when the authors are out there in some way doing readings or at least suggesting more fruitful places for us to send copies or information about their work. And I do what I can behind the scenes to help support authors and recommend them to academics who are in charge of a little bit of visiting writer money. The last thing is that we do fairly often publish some of the work in my magazine DIAGRAM (also technically published by the New Michigan Press) as a way of helping to promote it (and since I edit both, if I like the work, I usually want to publish it in both places).
I think most of our authors are variably comfortable with doing the self-promotion hustle thing, and rightly so. Some are excited and really out there, and their books tend to be more visible, and others, less so. We don’t put pressure on our authors, however; it’s really up to them to decide how active they want to be in their own work. I feel like this is pretty typical with smaller presses, especially in poetry (though I can think of a couple great examples, particularly bigger small presses like Graywolf, Sarabande, Copper Canyon, etc.). For me, though, publishing the author’s work is enough. If it sells, great. If not, we don’t worry much about it. We’ll keep the work in print and promote it as we can and sooner or later people will discover it and find their way to it.
Tameme:
We do the website, e-mail announcements (we have a large and ever-growing list) , and send out 400-500 review copies of each title. Most years, we also take a table at the Associated Writing Programs bookfair. Do we need writers to be involved? The more the better! I was thrilled when the author of our latest chapbook, Jorge Fernandez Granados, did a book launch with his translator, John Oliver Simon,
in Mexico City. They also arranged to give readings elsewhere in Mexico City and the nearby city of Puebla. As both a writer and an editor myself, I have learned how much work it is to get the word out about a book. It doesn't happen by magic, though we might like our readers to think so. Web support is also crucial--- a website and a blog and also, perhaps, something more such as facebook. A final word on this subject. I always say, promoting your book is not "self-promotion." You are not your book anymore than you are a donut--- if we're talking about your donut shop. How ridiculous would it be to set up a donut shop and not want to put a sign out front?
Dancing Girl Press:
I do what I can, but like in most poetry publishing the burden lies with the poet, which is true I guess no matter how small the press, chapbook or book publisher, what have you... We did share a table with another feminist press in 2007 at AWP, which was good for getting a lot of books into a lot of new hands, and I’m always hawking books at indie craft fairs and book fairs locally. For local authors, we usually do a big release reading, and they read at a lot of local events we’re invited to be a part of, and when we occasionally have writers rolling trough town, I’ll put some sort of reading together. I think all of our authors are very good at handling the business of being a poet promotion wise, almost all of them have websites, do readings in their areas, have blogs, send out their own review copies in addition to what we do. And of course, word of mouth is again very important, as we publish more and more authors, more people hear about us, more people encounter our poets and books…it grows exponentially…We’ve been lucky to get some good exposure in places like Poets & Writers, so that makes us a little bit more visible..
Greying Ghost Press:
The answer to this part is mostly the same as the previous. Almost all of the interest in GG titles has been drummed up through word of mouth. Luckily there’s a lot of awesome folks in the small press community so news travels fast. And the majority of these folks are incredibly supportive and like to help each other out. I haven’t explicitly asked an author to do any sort of promoting for their book. Generally I send them 1/4th or 1/3rd of the print run as artist copies and they can do whatever they’d like with those. Some may send some off to reviewers and some may hand them out to their friends. It’s up to them. I would love to have a reading tour. Maybe we could trash a hotel room. No such thing as bad publicity.
Kitchen Press:
I’ve gone to AWP for three years now. The first time I went Kitchen Press was part of a big reading that also involved LIT and Redivider. It went really well and things started picking up form there. AWP is a great place to do promotion.
Outside of that I send review copies out and do what I can to help poets get readings, especially the ones that are perhaps lesser known. But I find that the poets are also really good about promoting themselves, getting readings, hitting me up for extra copies of their books to bring with them to readings to sell.
I wish I had the funds to at least help send poets out on tours, but these days not even the bigger independent publishers are able to do that.
Dan:
Distribution. How are you getting your titles out into stores and in front of potential buyer’s faces? Those of you with seasonal subscription programs, can you explain them here and maybe suggest how successful those programs have become?
Future Tense Press:
My distribution is small but effective. I sell a lot of stuff at Powell’s. Again, I’m lucky to be in the position I’m in and we’re lucky to be a bookstore where people actually come to find these weird little small press things you can’t find anywhere. I do a good amount of stuff through Amazon as well and my own web site and mail order. The only distributor that I use these days is Last Gasp in San Francisco. I don’t think they deal with many chapbooks really but I have friends there, so I have a connection (they do sell zines and comics too). Through them, I am able to get some of my titles into places like Quimby’s, Atomic Books, and other stores like that. And then if the authors live in a specific city where they can sell their chapbook at a café or record store or something, that’s cool too. A couple of writers that I’ve had in bands sell them when their band is on tour. Justin Maurer sold a couple hundred of Don’t Take Your Life when Clorox Girls toured Europe two years ago.
New Michigan Press:
We sell direct to bookstores, and our titles are probably carried in a dozen places at any given time, though I’m looking to try to get distributed by SPD, or perhaps as part of this new series, through Ingram (though we’re baby potatoes to them). That’s part of the potential of the print-on-demand/digital publishing world, because our particular printer has connections with Amazon and Ingram, and so bookstores can order books. We’ve started (as of 2006) doing a series subscription for each year’s series. This came at the suggestion of one of our authors, and it’s a good one. I’m more inclined to subscribe to a series from a press (like Clear Cut, for instance, whose books are beautiful and reliably interesting), because then you don’t need to do the work to track them down individually. We offer six for $35, or something like that, which makes them a good deal. We’ve had good luck with this and I think it’s smart. A couple of our authors routinely buy a yearly subscription for friends and family at Christmas, which I think is also a great idea. We might try to do more of a push for this in 2008. It would be a great Christmas present for me, for instance (hint, hint, readers). And I think we have a lot of people who order one or two of our chapbooks, and then more, so it’s like we are getting a nice following, which is helpful.
Tameme:
There is always more to do.
Dancing Girl Press:
Our primary means of distribution is online and this works very well, whether people get them through our main website or our etsy store. I have a firm belief that traditional big box bookstores don’t serve poetry very well, and even many smaller ones, unless they are dedicated more to the art than the bottom line are strapped. There are a few notable exceptions to this, including Quimby’s here in Chicago, with it’s huge offering of DIY published and indie books and zines, Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, and it’s devotion to poetry, Beyond Baroque in LA, etc.. We have books on consignment in these, as well other similar stores that appreciate chapbooks and independent publishing, but 90% of our sales are still online. We do offer yearly subscription, and we have a handful of them. Since we publish so many books I’ve been sending them out in batches, three or so books every couple of months…..plus, if someone subscribes they get everything about 30% cheaper than ordinary list price. This is just our first year with it, so it will be interesting to see if it grows…
Greying Ghost Press:
Right now I don’t have any distribution, which I’m glad about. I get a lot of books into people’s hand through word of mouth. I have one or two bookstores that I do some consignments with. I guess my point here is that as long as the writing is legit and great, people will find a way to get their hands on a copy. It’s like the thrill of the hunt! My print runs are rather low so I’m not stuck with a lot of overstock. My operation here is very grassroots. I’m a firm believer in karma so I’m not adverse to giving away a couple free copies after a reading. This usually resonates well with folks. Honestly. The last thing I’d want to do is run this thing like a business. Yeah I know it technically is a business and I have to keep track of sales and costs and whatnot. But at the end of the day I’d want people to associate the press with the writing and the authors. Its all about the authors so whatever I can do spread the word, I’ll do.
Kitchen Press:
Reviews, as well as sending comp copies to people I know who will mention the book on their blogs. Most people purchase the books through paypal, so I’m able to see their email addresses and add them to my Kitchen Press contact list. Every person that orders is another person I can let know about new titles. Plus, I have a Kitchen Press group on Facebook. It has about 200 members.
Dan:
Have you investigated other formats for publishing the titles? Audio, e-books, etc.? Any decisions in those areas?
Future Tense Press:
I haven’t done e-books or audio books, but I should mention that the book I’m about to publish is a new avenue for Future Tense. We’re going to use Lightning Source, the print on demand company from Ingram. It’s for the Bob Gaulke book, which is about 130 pages. I can’t staple that many pages! And I can’t afford to toss a bunch of money to a printer so we’re going to do the Lightning Source thing and print up the first 100 or so and then keep going as it sells. I’ve seen a lot of Lightning Source books and they’ve been really good and much improved the past couple years.
New Michigan Press:
Not really. From a readerly standpoint, I have almost no interest in e-books or audio versions of something that’s meant to be a traditional book or chapbook. My feeling is that an e-book ought to really be doing something with its e-bookness, or else it’s a real mismatch between form and content. As, really, books should do something with their bookness (be beautiful artifacts, be nicely designed, be readable, be convenient and comfortable to hold). I suppose we would consider doing something audio if we accepted an audio chapbook. Though that’s far enough outside of my comfort zone that I don’t know if I’d be able to do it justice. But I wouldn’t rule it out. As, I suppose, I wouldn’t rule out doing an electronic format if it was necessarily taking advantage of that electronicness. But for the time being I think it’s important to give a shout-out to the old and wonderful and reliable technology of the physical book.
Tameme:
Not seriously, because the chapbook format is the most appropriate for Tameme at this time. That said, I have noticed some interesting things others are doing. The other day, poet Christine Boyka Kluge recently tipped me off about wigleaf, an on-line flash fiction journal. I'm enchanted by the possibilities of video. Charles Jensen, for example, makes little films out of poems. There are letterpress chapbooks--- I saw some gorgeous ones at the most recent AWP bookfair. We could go smaller: pamphlet, broadsides, postcards. Or bigger: murals. Write in sand, chisel into stone. The possibilities are infinite.
Dancing Girl Press:
I’m particularly interested in ways to sort of expand the notion of chapbook. We’ve done a few projects involving photography (Scenes from the Body & the upcoming Robyn Art book), an envelope full of poems and ephemera (at the hotel andromeda) , a collection of cards in a box (Secret Meanings of Greek Letters), and a box of love letter poems (Billet Doux.) We are publishing a booklength project this winter that’s poetry and photography, which will be a new venture. As someone with a foot in both worlds, I’m always looking for ways to marry words and visual art, so a plotting broadsides and new book art oriented projects all the time…
Greying Ghost Press:
I’ve been thinking of an affordable way to do poetry cassettes. Either recording readings or having someone record themselves reading and sending it to me. I have a strong fondness for cassettes and a general dislike for cds. I would also like to publish more broadsides and mini-chapbooks (for long poems or short fiction). E-books? Probably not. Too kitschy.
Kitchen Press:
I’ll be publishing the first Kitchen Press echap in the next few months. It’s by Rauan Klassnik, whose first book, Holy Land, is totally killer.
Dan:
How important do you feel your press’s website is? Do you have any specific plans for the website – podcasts, videos, etc.?
Future Tense Press:
I think the web site is crucial, especially nowadays. I only wish I could maintain my site better. I had a friend running it for years and then I started to do it myself more recently. I’m not a tech-wiz. I think a lot of newer presses have it easier now though, because you can build sites or blogs much easier now. I don’t have plans for videos or podcasts now but I do like the video idea, so maybe there will be a Youtube channel we’ll start up. Besides the web site though, I also have a Myspace page for Future Tense and I usually hype Future Tense stuff on my Facebook and Goodreads pages as well.
New Michigan Press:
I’m not uninterested in more author-related content on the website—I see how this stuff is useful for writers and for authors of full-length books, but I also don’t see it as being in any way essential. There’s something almost a little old-timey about publishing chapbooks that feels out of sync with the poetry bus, for instance, or videos, or author blogs. And half our authors have their own blogs anyhow. Probably we could do more, though, with our website, which is pretty static, and hasn’t really gotten a makeover in a long time. If we were to grow the press and do full-length books, for instance (which is always dangling just a little ways off for me in my ability to commit to that, because I think publishing full-lengths comes with a responsibility to make a stronger commitment to our titles—the nice thing about being small-small, on the fringe, really, is that there’s an element of fly-by-nightness that’s appealing, of being a small project, essentially of one mind. I’m thinking of the press that C.D. Wright used to (?) run, possibly with her husband—there was something etheric about it, *****
Tameme:
It's more influential than the journal and chapbooks themselves. We get a lot of traffic, and it seems our links page www.tameme.org/links has been very helpful to many people over the years.
Dancing Girl Press:
I think the website is pretty much the crux of the operation, since it’s our primary means of distribution, and much depends on getting people to it. Our online zine, wicked alice, is a part of this, as is blogging and our online shop... Podcasts and videos are probably far beyond my technical abilities at the moment, since I have a serviceable, but limited knowledge of even basic web design, but are interesting to consider.
Greying Ghost Press:
Right now our website is very plain and bare-boned. I’d like it to be a bit more sexy and laid out better. Maybe have more author interaction. Hopefully in the future we’ll figure something out. But to answer the question, the website is important for me because it’s the easiest and sometimes the only way folks can get the chapbooks. It makes the press only a click away for anyone. Plus the technology is such that anyone with a small amount of web savvy can start up a blog with a few paypal buttons. This is pretty much how greying ghost got started. Just a dude in his house with a printer and a blog!
Kitchen Press:
Kitchen Press has a blog, and I’d say it’s absolutely vital. Without it, the press never would have gotten off the ground. I have a second blog that serves a book store. Equally as vital.
Dan:
How far into the future are you thinking as a publisher? Do you have authors signed for your next catalogue? Farther down the line than that? Do you plan on continuing with the same number of titles per year indefinitely or is there a ramping up rate you have planned out?
Future Tense Press:
I usually have a year or so planned out ahead. Sometimes those plans are kind of tenuous though. Like, I am just waiting on a couple of writers to send me some kind of manuscript before I really say, Okay—your book is coming out in May of next year. Right now, I’m getting ready to do the Bob Gaulke book and then around the end of the year or early 2009, I’ll be doing a book by Chelsea Martin, a super talented young writer and artist from Oakland. And there will be a new book in the Manic D/Future Tense series next year as well.
New Michigan Press:
Right now I’m happy with the size and scope of the operation. Six titles a year is reasonable for me and my schedule and writing and reading and life. Doing more would require more institutionalness, more organization, more hierarchy, and more work, generally. I don’t think I could do it at this point. And I’m happy with the quality of what we are doing right now. I feel like we’ve made a difference with the writers we’ve published, and we have our own readership. One of our writers recently emailed me having heard NMP described as a taste-maker, which made me entirely pleased with the project.
Tameme:
Future plans? …. are simmering…
Dancing Girl Press:
I’m right now in the midst of reading submissions for our publication schedule next year, so by the end of October, I hope to have it all laid out. I don’t really like to plan much further in advance than that. As I mentioned before, we’ll be scaling back just a little from the deluge of titles this year, largely just for my own personal time crunch reasons with all the other plates I have in the air—working full time, making things for and running the Etsy shop, my own writing and artwork…
Greying Ghost Press:
No real schedule. I’m usually thinking two or three chapbooks ahead which is helpful for me because a lot of my paper and packaging material comes from flea markets and thrift stores. In that sense I need to have an idea of what I’d like to attempt with a chapbook in case I see something interesting. As for the number of titles per year I’d like to publish, I can’t really give a specific number. I’d like to publish one or two every couple months, so in that sense I can safely assume I’d publish 10-12 chapbooks a year. That would be in addiction to the broadsides and pamphlets.
Kitchen Press:
I have 4 more titles planned, 2 of which I’ll hopefully have out by the new year, and 2 that will appear in 2009.
I’m actually considering scaling back my output. My wife and I are expecting twins at the end of January, so I’ll definitely be taking 2 or 3 months off to adjust to our new lives. I also might be getting involved in a press with some friends to publish full length books. Regardless, I plan to keep Kitchen Press going indefinitely.
Dan:
I’d really like to once again thank everybody that participated in this. I hope you had a good time.
Future Tense Press:
Thanks, Dan. I also want give props to some of the other great chapbook publishers out there: Cloverfield, So New Media, Sunnyoutside, Ugly Duckling, and Rose Metal Press!
New Michigan Press:
Thanks for concentrating on the chapbook as a form and these good people here involved in its propagation.
Tameme:
Warmest thanks to you, Dan. Blog on!
Dancing Girl Press:
Thank YOU. It’s nice to be in such awesome company.
Greying Ghost Press:
Can’t wait to read everyone’s responses! Thanks Dan!
Kitchen Press:
Thanks. It’s been fun.
Dan:
A last note, I highly recommend titles from each and every one of these publishers – I have not read a chapbook from any of them that I didn’t really enjoy, and I’m frequently amazed at just how nice the books themselves are. Please go out and support them.
Muchas gracias Dan! I've enjoyed reading about the other chapbook publishers here.
Posted by: C.M. Mayo | October 13, 2008 at 08:33 AM